Published 9:00 am, Tuesday, July 8, 2014

INSTITUTE FOR POLICY INNOVATION

Even as President Obama goes to Congress to ask for an additional $3.7 billion to handle the illegal immigrant humanitarian crisis on the southern border, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced the government is making available up to $4 billion in loan guarantees to renewable energy companies.

And right off the bat Moniz promised $150 million in loan guarantees for the Cape Wind offshore wind farm project, a decade-old effort to put the country’s first offshore wind farm off the coast of Nantucket Bay in Massachusetts.

Oh, and that’s after Cape Wind secured a $780 million tax credit at the end of the year, part of the 20-year-old Production Tax Credit that Republicans have (so far) refused to renew.

But the blue state of Massachusetts is good with this lavishing of taxpayer money, right? Well, not everyone. See, the company pushing Cape Wind has negotiated a contract with some Bay State utilities to buy the energy—if the wind farm ever gets up and running.

However, that negotiated rate is twice what utilities are paying for an equivalent amount from fossil fuels. So some Massachusetts residents will be paying more for their electricity, and they aren’t particularly happy about that.

In his statement touting Obama administration “investment” successes, Moniz cited the electric car company Tesla, which makes a beautiful car, but the low end model costs $70,000. And without U.S. taxpayer “investments,” the poor might have to pay, say, $100,000 for a Tesla. Glad we have someone in the White House working for the middle class.

For some reason, Moniz forgot to praise the half billion dollars taxpayers gave to the solar panel company Solyndra, along with several other companies, which then went belly up.

Now Playing:

Given the country’s $17 trillion debt, maybe Congress should respond to the president’s request for more money by offering to shift the $4 billion from DOE’s crony capitalism budget to Homeland Security for the border crisis. That approach would address two failed Obama policies at the same time.